Abstract:
This thesis deals first above all with the analysis of the Turkish emphatic adjectives (yeni -yépyeni, mavi - másmavi, sert - sémsert, temiz - tértemiz). Up to now only few rules have been known for the formation of such adjectives. Applying morphophonological methods based on an extensive corpus it was finally possible in the framework of this thesis to find out, to describe and to explain the rules of their formation. These rules are based on the contrast principle of identity avoidance, i. e. the formation of the emphatic adjectives consists in a heading morpheme that receives by a special segmentation - reduplication of a (part of a) syllable, closed by some contrastive material from the set of the sounds {p, s, m, r} - and by an accentuation normally strange for the Turks - stress on the first syllable - that signal character which takes into account the intended effect of emphasis. By the best knowledge of the author the notion of contrast is for the first time not only conceived in a qualitative way, but also defined in a quantitative way applying articulation place and manner and thus objectified.
To receive additional evidence for the revealed solution of this old Turkish problem some further investigations were carried out: firstly, the determination and the classification of all forms of reduplication in the Turkish language to compare them with the emphatic adjective reduplication, secondly, extensive sound statistics, thirdly, many synchronous and diachronous analyses, and fourthly, an extensive test with Turkish native speakers to verify the validity of the detected rules.